[Medical English and legal English: similarities and differences between two specialist languages].

The comparative evaluation of specialist languages has a growing importance nowadays. The medical lexicon is characterized by a notable terminological richness both in Italian and in English, and the same is true for legal English, which has included, through time, a number of terms deriving from Latin and French. This scientific contribution highlights some features of medical-scientific English and legal English, pointing out certain similarities and the differences between the two. Furthermore, with reference to the differences, a selection of terms with the same orthographical form but with very different lexical meanings is here presented.